by Jo Ann Brown
Deputy Flanagan unbent enough to give her a commiserating smile. “More kids who do stupid things need advocates like you in their corner. Let’s find her and then we’ll see what can be done to help her and her little boy.” He flipped his notebook closed and stored it beneath his dark coat. “I know you plain folks don’t keep photographs of each other, so I won’t ask you for one. We’ll go with the description you gave us.”
Collecting their personal contact information, including the phone number for the bakery and when Caleb expected to be working there and when he’d be at his farm, Deputy Flanagan gave them each a card with his direct number on it.
“Don’t hesitate to call,” he said.
Caleb walked him to the door. After the deputy left, he turned off the kaffi machine.
Annie finished her hot chocolate and washed out the cup, looking over her shoulder when Caleb said, “It’s beginning to snow harder, so we should get home.”
“I wish there was more we could do,” Annie said.
“We can pray for her safety. If we can’t help, God can.”
“I’ve already been doing that.”
“Me, too.” He smiled sadly. “I know this is upsetting for you, Annie, because it is for me. However, no matter how much we want to help, leaving Becky Sue in God’s hands may be the best thing we can do.”
“God and the sheriff’s department.”
“They work as part of His plan, too.” He plucked her coat and black shawl off the peg and handed them to her. “Bundle up. If anything, it’s got colder out.”
“Impossible.”
“I wish you were right.”
She slipped her arms into her coat and hooked it closed before pulling the thick shawl over her shoulders.
“Do you think she knows that her parents don’t want her to come home?” she asked as she watched him button his coat.
“She’s a smart girl. She has to know about their disapproval.” He gave an inelegant snort. “That’s probably why she left.”
“Will you insist she returns there after she’s found?”
“It’s my duty to see she’s taken care of.”
“And she’s doing fine right here. Let’s leave things the way they are until we’ve sorted out her story.”
He shocked her by pulling her close and leaning his head against the top of her bonnet. She stiffened in astonishment, then softened against his firm chest as he murmured, “Danki, Annie. I don’t know how I would have dealt with Becky Sue and Joey without you.”
“You would have found a way. Caleb Hartz solves every problem.” She tilted her head to look at him as she grinned. “Isn’t that what everyone says?”
“If they did, they were wrong, because I couldn’t have managed any of this without your help.”
And my family’s, she should have added, but she leaned her cheek on his chest again, savoring the moment that would never come again if her twin started walking out with him after the mud sale.
Chapter Thirteen
The wind eased as Caleb turned the buggy onto the twisting road that followed Harmony Creek because trees lined the road along the farm fences. The cold deepened more. He peered through the falling snow. He hadn’t expected so many storms this late in the winter. Last winter had been rough, but had begun easing before the middle of March.
“Caleb! Look!”
At Annie’s call, he shook himself out of his lethargy. Had he been surrendering to the cold? A fearsome thought.
Caleb peered through the thick snow in the direction she pointed. At his house, he realized. No, not the house. The driveway.
A gray-topped buggy was parked there. His buggy, he realized, when he saw the shelves stacked in the back seat. He’d planned to take them to the bakery until Becky Sue and the buggy vanished.
Turning into his drive, he didn’t wait for the open buggy to stop before he jumped out. He raced through the fallen snow to his door.
He threw it open and stared at his young cousin, who was peeling an apple.
“Becky Sue, what are you doing here?”
“You said I could come here anytime I wanted,” she replied, then waved as Annie came into the kitchen. “Hi, Annie! Gut to see you.”
Caleb frowned. “But where have you been, Becky Sue? We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“You were looking for me?” She kept her eyes on her task as she cut up the apple and dropped the slices onto others in a pie pan. “Why would you do that?”
“Because nobody knew where you were.”
“You didn’t?” She reached for a stick of butter and began to cut small slabs to put on top of the apples.
Annie stepped forward, pulling off her shawl. She dropped it on a chair. “You said you’d never leave without letting me or someone else know where you were going. You agreed to that, Becky Sue.”
“I know, but we were talking about when I leave Harmony Creek.”
He winced. How callously the girl spoke of walking away from the Waglers, who had welcomed her into their house and into their hearts!
“I thought,” Annie said in a measured voice, “that you might have left Harmony Creek today.”
“Without my son?”
“Ja.”
Annie’s terse answer had startled his cousin. Enough to stop her from acting as if everything that had happened was nothing more than an inadvertent misunderstanding?
“I wouldn’t leave my son like that,” Becky Sue said. “I love him.”
“We know you do,” Caleb replied with care. “Anyone who sees the two of you together knows that you belong together.”
His cousin made a soft sound. A gulp? A gasp? A smothered sob? He couldn’t tell as she put the top crust on the pie.
“I left you a note on the table in the living room at your house, Annie.” At last, Becky Sue looked at them. “Right by the books Leanna is always reading.”
“But Leanna was at her job, and I was at the bakery.”
“Oh,” Becky Sue said with a flippant shrug. “I guess that’s why you didn’t see it. I thought you were home when I went out.”
“Out where?” He regretted the question before Annie put a cautionary hand on his arm. The minute the words came out of his mouth, Becky Sue’s face grew stony.
“We’ve been worried about you,” Annie said. “If we sound angry, it’s because we were scared you’d got lost in the storm.”
“I know to stay in on a bad day like this.” The girl waved the knife she was using to slice openings in the top crust. “I mean, I came over here, but it can’t be a half mile from your house to here, Annie.” Lowering the knife to the counter, she sighed. “Okay, I came over here to make a couple pies for you, Caleb. I thought if you sampled what I can bake, you might hire me to work in your bakery, too.”
He hoped he was able to hide his shock. The last thing he wanted in his bakery was a recalcitrant teenager who seldom thought of anything but herself.
Again Annie saved him from saying something he’d regret. “Becky Sue, I’m sure once Caleb’s bakery is the success it’s going to be, he’ll be looking to hire several more people. How wise of you to look toward the future like that!”
If there was sarcasm behind her comment, he didn’t hear it. Neither did the girl, because she smiled and carried the pie to the oven.
He left the two in his house as he went to the phone shack between his house and Jeremiah’s. A quick call to Deputy Flanagan put a halt to the search for Becky Sue. Yet Caleb remained bothered by something he couldn’t explain.
After he’d dropped Annie off at her house and he was on his way home, Caleb realized what had been nettling him. If his cousin had left a note on the living room table by the books, one of the Waglers would have seen it. He couldn’t imagine Grossmammi Inez’s eagle eyes not picking up on something as unusual as a note left on a table in the livin
g room.
Becky Sue had been lying...again.
* * *
Annie followed Caleb into the bakery the next morning. He’d told her on the ride from her house that he’d checked out the colors she’d painted on the wall, and he thought her idea of yellow would be the best. She listened to his comments, knowing he didn’t want to talk about Becky Sue and what had happened yesterday. Like her, he didn’t believe a note had been left at her house. There hadn’t been any sign of it last night, and Becky Sue’s excuse was that the boppli or the puppy might have taken it.
Caleb groaned as he halted right in front of her.
She squeezed past him and stared at the front room in shock. Paint was splattered over every surface and flowed across the floor, mixing together in puddles in the scraped boards. The whole space looked as if a rainbow had exploded in it.
“What happened?” he asked, shock straining his voice.
As if in answer to his question, Joey began to shriek from the other side of the display case.
Annie ran around the case to where the little boy stood. He held two paintbrushes, one in each hand. They dragged on the floor, adding another layer of paint to the worn wood. Blue and yellow were speckled across his clothing and in his hair.
She waved Caleb away, and he stepped into the kitchen. Once he was out of sight, the little boy’s tears vanished. When she knelt beside him, Joey reached out to pat her face. He began to grin, his six teeth, including the new ones, visible.
“Jo-Jo. Pretty.”
Annie picked up the boppli and stood before he could do more damage. She took the paintbrushes from him. When he started to screw up his face again to protest, she said, “It’s very, very pretty, Joey, but it’s finished.”
“Fin-ish?”
She used the word he did at the end of every meal. “Done. You did a gut job.”
That was the truth, she had to acknowledge. There weren’t many surfaces he hadn’t painted. The glass in the display case was covered with streaks of yellow, blue and green from the small sample bottles they’d got from the hardware store, and the front door had those colors as well as red—where had that paint come from?—which were marked on it with tiny fingerprints.
Puddles of paint marked any lower area in the floor. More paint oozed in slow streams around higher ridges in the wood, creating a crazy-quilt pattern.
She was relieved to see that the big window hadn’t been splashed, but there was a spot of red on the ceiling near the door. How had the toddler managed to get paint up there?
Looking at the kitchen, she said nothing as she watched Caleb take in what one small boy had done in such a short time. It couldn’t have taken him long because Becky Sue was an attentive mamm, keeping a close eye on her son.
At that thought, Annie asked, “Where’s your mamm?”
The bathroom door opened and Becky Sue emerged. She stared around herself in disbelief. “Joey did this?”
Annie frowned. Was it possible for a single one-year-old boppli to make such a mess so quickly? She bit back her question as tears welled up in Becky’s eyes.
“Oh, Caleb,” the girl cried. “I’m sorry. I left him alone for just a moment while I was in the bathroom. I never guessed he could do this! I’ll clean it up.”
“No, get him out of here.”
Her face crumbled. “Caleb, I’m so, so sorry. Please don’t be angry.”
“I’m not, but you need to get out of here.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. “We shouldn’t have come to Harmony Creek Hollow. We’ve caused you nothing but trouble. I hope you can forgive me. You’ve got to forgive Joey.”
“Becky Sue, you’re misunderstanding me.” His voice softened as he put a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “I don’t want you to leave the settlement. I want you to get Joey out of the bakery because I don’t know how old that red paint is. It might have lead in it. A little one shouldn’t be near that stuff.” He gave her a gentle smile. “There’s nothing to forgive. As my teacher used to say, boys will be boys and nothing on God’s green earth will ever change that.”
Annie’s heart swelled at how kind he was to the distraught girl. She hurried to add, “Don’t worry, Becky Sue. Caleb and I will take care of this.” She held out the little boy, making sure he didn’t face his cousin and start crying again.
Taking him, Becky Sue said, “But it’ll take you hours to clean this up.”
“Which is why we must get started.”
The girl nodded, gathered her son to her and, holding his face against his shoulder so he didn’t see Caleb, hurried to get them into their coats and out of the bakery.
As soon as they were gone, Annie carried the paintbrushes to the bathroom so she could rinse them out in the old sink. Caleb called after her, and she halted.
“I couldn’t hear everything she said from the kitchen,” he said. “Did she explain why she was here?”
“No.” She looked at the back door. “What do you think she’s up to?”
* * *
Caleb found the top for the yellow paint container and twisted it on. Setting it on top of the green jar, he said, “I can’t begin to guess what goes on in Becky Sue’s head.” He glanced around the mess the boppli had made. “To think I took so long making up my mind about what colors I wanted in my bakery.”
A laugh burst out of Annie. She clamped her hand over her mouth, but whimsy continued to spark in her eyes. After putting the brushes in a cup in the sink and running water in it, she said, “I’m sorry, Caleb. I know it isn’t funny.”
“You’re right. It isn’t funny.” He bent and ran his finger through a blob of yellow paint. “But this is.” He tapped the end of her pert nose with his fingertip.
She yelped. “What did you do that for?”
“So your face matches your apron.”
Looking at the splotches of color on her black apron, she laughed. She got a cloth and cleaned her nose. “You know, Caleb, the walls can be repainted, but...”
“But what?”
“What do you think of leaving the floor as it is? It looks so cheerful.”
He had to agree. “But too fancy for a bakery run by plain folks. I doubt our leaders would think it’s appropriate.”
“You could ask Eli and Jeremiah.” She got another clean rag and began to wipe the paint from the glass display case. “There’s nothing in our Ordnung about a painted floor in a retail shop.”
“True.”
“And you can tell them that the design was Joey’s idea.”
“A little child shall lead them, it says in Isaiah, though that’s not the intention of the verse.”
“Why not?” She chuckled. “If we leave his fingerprints right next to the splatters, it’ll be clear to everyone that youthful enthusiasm created this. Who knows? People may come from far and wide to take a look at your floor.”
“I’d rather have them come for the baked goods.”
“They’ll come back for those.” Rinsing out the cloth in the sink, she patted his arm as she walked past him to get a bucket from the kitchen. “You worry too much, Caleb. Trust God will see you through.”
“I do trust God, but He has left the details to me.”
“You worry too much,” she repeated. “You should try to enjoy watching your dream come true.”
Her words stung. Not because they weren’t true, because her advice was sound. However, her words reminded him of Verba and her constant harping that he should be different from what he was. He hadn’t guessed that Verba’s meddling would still bother him, but it did. It took all his strength to submerge those feelings and not lash out with serrated words, because it wasn’t Annie’s fault he couldn’t get over what Verba had done. Until he could, he must not consider walking out with any other woman.
Not even, he thought as he watched Annie fill the bucket in the kitchen sin
k, this one.
* * *
Why couldn’t she guard her tongue and halt it from wagging before she had a chance to think?
Annie dumped yet another bucket of paint-filled water into the kitchen sink, being careful not to splash the dirty water onto the counter and cabinets. Her fingers clenched on its plastic side. How could she lecture Caleb, who was a man of great faith? So many people had hoped he would marry before the men in their settlement were ordained, because they’d hoped that he would go from their community leader to their spiritual leader. His ability to listen to both sides and find common ground was admired. By the Leit and Englischers, according to what she’d heard his fellow volunteer firemen say.
She tried to engage him in conversation while they worked to clean the cases, the ceiling and the walls. Every attempt failed. He’d respond with a few words, then go quiet. As the morning passed, she wondered if he’d said more than a dozen complete sentences to her.
When, a couple of hours after midday, Caleb said that they should return in the morning and start the repainting then, she was relieved. She rinsed out the cloths and bucket she’d used, as well as the paintbrushes Joey had. She hadn’t seen where Caleb had put the paint containers. She guessed they were somewhere out of reach of the little boy.
How had Joey managed to open the containers? She was plagued by the niggling thought that he hadn’t managed it on his own, but she couldn’t guess why Becky Sue would help her son make such a mess.
Annie wished she and Caleb could discuss it, but he’d raised a high wall between them with his curt answers and silences. She finished cleaning up before pulling on her coat and other outerwear.
The ride to her house was as uncomfortable as the work at the shop. When she got out of the buggy, she thanked Caleb as she did each day and told him she’d see him tomorrow. He nodded and turned the buggy toward the road.
Shouts rang through the air. Happy shouts. She glanced toward the far end of the hollow. It sounded like teenagers having a gut time. With a sigh, she walked toward the house.